The purpose of this study was to investigate developmental gender differences in academic achievement areas, with the primary focus on writing, using the child and adolescent portion (ages 6–21 years) of the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement—Second Edition, Brief Form, norming sample (N = 1,574). Path analytic models with gender, parent education, age, age2, and gender‐by‐age moderation as predictors of reading, writing, and math were used to test for gender differences and for the influence of development on these differences. A small but consistent advantage was identified for females in reading. No gender differences were detected in math. The most important results of the present study pertain to a gender gap in writing in favor of females that increased as a function of age. Male students are at greater risk for writing failure than are females.

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The gender similarities hypothesis by J. S. Hyde ( 2005 ), based on large-scale reviews of studies, concludes that boys and girls are more alike than different on most psychological variables, including academic skills such as reading and math (J. S. Hyde, 2005 ). Writing is an academic skill that may be an exception. The authors investigated gender differences in academic achievement using a large, nationally stratified sample of children and adolescents ranging from ages 7-19 years (N = 2,027). Achievement data were from the conormed sample for the Kaufman intelligence and achievement tests. Multiple-indicator, multiple-cause, and multigroup mean and covariance structure models were used to test for mean differences. Girls had higher latent reading ability and higher scores on a test of math computation, but the effect sizes were consistent with the gender similarities hypothesis. Conversely, girls scored higher on spelling and written expression, with effect sizes inconsistent with the gender similarities hypothesis. The findings remained the same after controlling for cognitive ability. Girls outperform boys on tasks of writing.

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The relation between social dyadic variables such as teacher–student relationship quality (TSRQ) and student achievement have been well‐documented within prior work; however, less research has focused on how TSRQ associates with achievement. We used longitudinal structural equation modeling to investigate the extent that teacher self‐efficacy mediated the relationship between TSRQ and math achievement for 881 children in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study. Teacher–student closeness had moderate to large positive effects on teacher self‐efficacy, whereas teacher–student conflict had small to moderate negative effects on teacher self‐efficacy, which then had small positive effects on math achievement. Closeness only had indirect effects on math achievement via teacher self‐efficacy, whereas conflict had direct and indirect effects on math achievement. The results were consistent across grades, lending strength to the findings. This study provides researchers and practitioners evidence of an area that can be developed to potentially enhance student success in math.

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